Plain Killing (21 page)

“See you then,” she told him.

Rachel was waiting for Evan on the front lawn when a police cruiser pulled up and he got out. “Thanks,” he said as he closed the door.

Rachel walked over to the driveway as Evan walked up it. He was no longer wearing Timothy’s clothing, but the khaki pants and blue oxford shirt didn’t look familiar either. He was still wearing his work boots. He must have known what she was thinking because, as he walked toward her, he indicated the clothes. “Something someone had in his locker. I still haven’t been home yet. Headed there for a shower next.”

She nodded. “You want to go sit?” She pointed in the direction of the swing under the arbor.

He stood there for a minute, hands on his hips. “How about we take a walk? I’ve been sitting too long. The detectives let me listen in on the questioning. I need to stretch my legs.”

“Walk it is.” They crossed the driveway and started across the back lawn toward the gristmill house. There was a nice path that went around it and into the woods behind the property, an old deer path she’d cleared for her guests for their strolling pleasure.

“So,” Evan said. He didn’t seem all that happy.

“Did Ed confess?”

“I really shouldn’t be talking about this.”

“I already know more about the case than the police,” she argued. “And you know I won’t say anything to anyone. Who would I tell?”

He hesitated. “Ed did confess.” He glanced at her. “But . . . it’s not the confession we were—” He stopped and started again. “ ‘Hoping for’ is not quite the right phrase. But you know what I mean.”

“Okay.” She drew out the word, not quite following but trying to give him the opportunity to speak.

They circled the building site and walked to the edge of the millpond. “Ed’s definitely going to jail,” Evan said. “He confessed to taking money in exchange for delivery of Hannah and Beth.”

Evan scratched his chin; he needed a shave. “Here’s the thing, Rachel. Ed did sell the girls, but he didn’t kill Beth.”

All she could think of was that Ed Wagler was clearly not the man he appeared to be. How could the police believe anything he said? “How do you know that?”

“He has an alibi, Rachel. I made a few phone calls this morning.”

“On a Sunday morning?”

“I started with the hotel in Dayton, Ohio, where he was at a Hometown Grocers’ convention. When the police call, people tend to be willing to talk, even if it is Sunday morning. Ed Wagler was definitely there. According to a woman I talked to in Pittsburgh, he gave a presentation. I still have a few phone calls to make, but . . . Ed Wagler didn’t kill Beth Glick.”

She thought on that for a minute. “He said he took money in exchange for the girls. Did he say why?”

“Did you know Ed was a gambler?”

“I know he used to go to Atlantic City once in a while with Willy O’Day.”

“He goes once a month to Atlantic City, every month. Stays all night. Blackjack. Big gambler. Big loser,” he added.

They walked past a willow tree that shaded the path and a section of the millpond. She heard ducks squawking but couldn’t see them. The mother and ducklings she had seen the other day, she guessed.

“Apparently he has serious debt. Didn’t want his wife to know. Didn’t want to lose his business. It’s a pretty standard story. He says someone came up to him at a casino and said she was looking for undocumented workers. Females for maid service and child care and such.”

She shook her head, meaning she wasn’t following.

“The woman was looking for people in the country illegally. Women without social security cards. He said it occurred to him that the Amish women he was giving rides out of town to obviously needed work. He says he thought he was doing them a favor.”

“He didn’t think it was odd that this woman was offering him money?” she asked in disbelief. “Ed never struck me as stupid.”

“But apparently he was foolish. Maybe naïve.”

The path they were following entered the woods, and it was immediately cooler. Rachel had checked the weather report while on her laptop that morning. Cooler temperatures were expected early in the week, for which she was thankful. “So, he picked up girls at the schoolhouse and then took them where?”

“To someone else. He didn’t know who. There was a meeting place—sometimes at a rest stop, other times a diner. A respectable-looking woman would pick the girls up. Honestly, Ed was crying a lot. Sometimes he didn’t make a lot of sense. We had to stop twice because he thought he was going to be sick. It could take weeks to sift through his statements.”

“Hannah pretty much said the same thing,” she mused. “About meeting someone in a van. I guess Ed left her with someone who then drove her to someone else. At some point, she thought Mennonites were picking her up. That they were going to find her a job.” She glanced at Evan. “I still can’t believe Ed would be part of something like this. How did he not know something bad was going on here?”

“He said the thought crossed his mind, but . . .” He pressed his hand to his forehead and let it fall. “I don’t know. We believe what we want to believe, I guess.”

“What did he say about Hannah?”

“He basically gave the same story as he gave for Beth. He just drove her to meet this woman.”

“Did he say how many girls he delivered to this mysterious woman?” She ducked under a low-hanging branch, making a mental note that it needed to be pruned. “What about the boys? You know very well that he helped Enosh.”

“Apparently, sometimes he really did just give kids a ride out of town.”

“Like Lucy Zug? She seems to be doing well.”

“Exactly.”

She glanced up at him. “You ask him about Lorraine?”

“Yeah. She was one of the girls he helped
find a job
.”

She closed her eyes for a second, then opened them. “We may never know what happened to her.” They’d stopped on the path.

Evan was just standing there, hands in his pockets. “No.”

Rachel gazed up at a patch of blue sky peeking through the treetops. “So if Ed didn’t kill Beth, who did?”

“Could be what we guessed from the very beginning. A random act of violence. Beth was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“A random act,” she repeated. It made perfectly logical sense. She knew that. But it didn’t . . . feel right. “Did Ed say anything about who else was involved? Here in Stone Mill? These girls didn’t just approach him in his store, did they?”

“I don’t know. We went over a lot of stuff, Rachel. After a while, I don’t know if it was an act or what, but he seemed confused.”

“Ed, confused? That doesn’t sound like the Ed I know.”

“Neither does the man who agreed to accept money to transport young women to strangers in the middle of the night.”

“Good point,” she conceded, and started to walk again. “Have there been any other murders similar to Beth’s in the area? I know no other Amish have been murdered—I’d have heard about that—but . . . runaways? Strangulations leading to drownings in old rock quarries?”

“Nothing that fits the circumstances of Beth Glick’s murder, but it’s something Sergeant Haley is looking into.” His cell phone in his pocket rang, and he stopped and pulled it out. “It’s what you do after a month passes and you have no leads. The detective—Sorry, Rachel, I’m going to have to get this. Evan Parks,” he said into the phone.

He turned away from Rachel, presenting his back to her. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He paused. “Yes, sir. Where?” He paused. “I understand, sir. I’ll see you there.”

When Evan turned back to Rachel, his face seemed paler than it had a moment before. “Ed Wagler had a heart attack during transport to lockup.”

She covered her mouth with her hand, in shock. “Is he—”

“I have to go.” He turned and started back the way they’d come. “He’s still alive, but they don’t know if he’s going to pull through.”

At six on Monday evening, Rachel parked her Jeep next to her father’s barn. As she got out, she checked her cell. No calls, but she took note that the battery was low. Luckily, she wasn’t planning on making or receiving any calls while she was at her parents’. She really
did
need to get a new phone or a new battery, though. She’d hardly talked on it all day, and the battery was still drained. Making sure the phone was on silent, she stuck it into the pocket of her skirt and walked around to open the back gate of the Jeep. She’d finally remembered her father’s bushel baskets; she’d had to take the backseat out of the Jeep to fit them all in. She removed the three stacks of baskets, set them by the open barn door, and then headed for the house.

She found something so comforting about walking through the barnyard on a warm September evening, with the peaceful lowing of the cows and the cheerful shouts of her brothers and sisters drifting over the farmyard. The younger kids were playing softball in the meadow. She waved, and several waved back.

Normally, she would have joined them, but tonight she kept walking because she felt like she needed to talk to her parents. With eight siblings and a never-ending assortment of visiting friends and relatives in residence in the big farmhouse, she had only rare and precious moments alone with them. Somehow, talking with her parents even after she’d left Stone Mill and then returned, made her feel more capable. More confident.

Rachel needed a boost of confidence right now. She was so frustrated by her inability to track down Beth’s killer. So disappointed, not just in the state of the investigation but in herself. She’d been
so
sure when they caught Ed Wagler and he’d admitted to being the one who sold the girls into shame, that the case would be solved. But it wasn’t, and if Evan was right, if it had been a random killing, then they might never know what had happened.

One of the dogs gave an excited yip and scampered, tail wagging, to greet her. She found her parents sitting on the back porch with a bushel of freshly picked lima beans between them. Her
dat
and
mam
each had a big yellow Tupperware bowl in their laps, and they were shelling limas for canning and freezing.

Her
dat
looked up, and a slow grin spread across his face. “Rachel, it’s good to see you.”

Her mother glanced at her, and for an instant their gazes locked. Rachel felt a warm flush of pleasure as she read the affection and genuine welcome in her
mam
’s eyes. A heartbeat later, her mother fixed her attention on the bowl of shelled beans in her lap.

“Come, join us,” her father urged. “We’ve got a lot of lima beans to finish up before dark.”

“Better you’d call some of the kids to help, Samuel,” her
mam
said. “They’ve still got plenty of energy. They should be using it to good ends.”

“
Ach,
Esther, leave the young ones to have their sport. Tell the truth. You enjoy the quiet as much as I do.” He chuckled and patted the empty rocker beside him. “How often do we get to visit with our Rachel, now that she’s gone out amongst the Englishers?”

He had pulled off his shoes and socks, and left them by the back door. That meant that his chores were done for the day, and he could relax in the comfort of his home until time for evening prayers in the parlor. Her
dat
’s prayer ritual never took long and he never got preachy. He would remind the children of the positive actions they’d taken that day and of the way the Lord had blessed them with His grace. He would instruct them to think of how they could best use their time on the morrow, remember any in the neighborhood who were ill or grieving, and tell them how thankful he was for home and harvest and family.

His prayers had once been the highlight of Rachel’s day, and they had never failed to bring her comfort and a sense that God, like her father, was watching over them. Those memories had cradled and strengthened her in her journey to find her purpose in life, and continued to do so.

Taking an extra bowl from the stack on the porch, Rachel gathered several handfuls of unshelled lima beans and settled into the creaky wooden rocker. For a while, none of them spoke; they just rocked and shelled beans. Then, casually, her mother began to tell her father about the carrots and potatoes she and the children had brought up from the garden that afternoon and how many pints of grape jelly she and the girls had made.

Rachel’s
dat
shared his plans for acquiring a new Dorset ram and traveling with their son Paul to a fence-building workday for a needy family on the coming Saturday. Rachel listened, letting the familiar farm news flow over her, seep into her pores, and ease her discontent with her own failures.

And after a while, as she’d known it would, the talk turned to Ed Wagler and the terrible thing that he’d done. Even though it hadn’t been forty-eight hours since his arrest, it had made the morning papers, as well as national news. Of course, no one knew the part she and Mary Aaron had played in the stakeout; all parties involved had agreed that information had nothing to do with the case and need not be publicized. The fact that Ed had had a heart attack while being transported by the police had been widely publicized, as well as speculation as to whether or not the police were somehow responsible for his life-threatening condition.

“The bishop has asked us to pray for Ed,” her
dat
said, “but it’s a hard thing after what he’s done.”

“I never trusted that Ed,” her
mam
said. “Never liked the way he weighed out cheese. He knew I always wanted three pounds of Swiss, but it always went over. ‘A little heavy,’ he’d say. ‘Is that all right?’ Pushy, even for an Englisher, he was.” She emphasized her words by snapping the bean hulls violently.

Her father reached over to pat her mother’s hand. “Peace, Esther. It’s not for us to judge. Ed must answer for his sins.”

“He knows he did wrong,” Rachel offered. She wasn’t sure that she could forget or forgive, but was glad that Ed had been able to provide a solid alibi for his whereabouts the week Beth had been murdered. It was easier to believe that some stranger was capable of murder rather than someone she’d known and liked. “He claimed he was as shocked about Beth’s death as everyone else and that he hadn’t seen her since he gave her a ride out of the valley. He said he knew nothing that would help the police find whoever did kill her.” She thought for a minute. “I was there when Evan took him in for questioning. I really think he was sorry for the part he played in Beth’s leaving.”

“Sorry he was caught, more likely,” her mother said tartly, and then added, “Samuel,” in case Rachel might assume that she was speaking to her.

Rachel’s
dat
continued looking at his wife, and her mother’s cheeks took on a hint of rose color.

“But I will pray for his soul,” her
mam
allowed. “For I truly hope he won’t die before he’s had his opportunity to repent.”

“Whatever else Ed Wagler has to answer for, he isn’t a murderer,” Rachel said. “Which means that the murderer is still out there. I have tried so hard to come up with something to help the police, but I’m about out of ideas.” She swallowed against the tightness in her throat and reached for more limas.

Her mother gathered up the buckets of shells and carried them to an empty bushel basket at the edge of the steps. Rachel knew that the lima bean shells would be shared between the pigpen and the chicken yard. Nothing went to waste on an Amish farm. Even vegetable peelings, used coffee grounds, and worn-out clothing could be repurposed. She watched as her mother strode gracefully back to her chair. Esther Mast was still an attractive woman, and the lavender dress and spotless white
kapp
accentuated the strong planes of her face. No hint of gray tinted her arched brows, and the laugh lines and wrinkles only added to her character.
I hope I look as good as she does when I’m her age,
Rachel thought.

Rachel’s mother refilled her yellow bowl, returned to her rocking chair, and began to shell beans with a renewed urgency.

“Maybe what Ed did had nothing to do with Beth coming home,” her father suggested thoughtfully. “Could be that she was coming home and wickedness crossed her path.”

“That’s what Evan says the police think,” Rachel said. “A random act of violence. It happens, even in places like Stone Mill.”

“Lots of violence here in the olden days, back when the Indians warred with the Englishers,” her mother said. “My
grossfader
had it from his
grossfader
. Mostly our people were friends to the savages and they left us alone, but sometimes, when tempers ran high and the militias raided the Indian towns, our blood ran, too.”

“Maybe the police are right, but I just keep thinking there’s a missing puzzle piece,” Rachel said, looking at her father. “Something someone isn’t telling. I’ve talked to kids who left and turned English, and I tried to talk to Hannah Verkler before she went away, but no one wants to tell what they know.”

“It’s the Amish way,” her mother said, looking directly at her father. “Keeping secrets. The practice’s been handed down generation to generation from the martyr times in the Old Country.” She sighed. “You’d think that some of these young people would use their heads. If they’d told about Ed a long time ago, Beth might be alive.”

“I thought about Eli Rust’s son, you know, the boy that left and joined the Marines,” Rachel said. “He might not be afraid to talk to the police.” She found a shriveled bean and tossed it into the bucket with the empty hulls. “But Mary Aaron said he’s overseas with the military and won’t be home for six months.”

“I remember when he ran away,” her father answered softly. “It was a shock to his father.”

“I was not surprised. That Rust family has always had a name for being wayward,” her
mam
said. “Always in one kind of trouble or another with the bishop. You remember when Eli bought that John Deere tractor and thought he could use it for getting lumber off that timber section? Didn’t think he’d get caught.”

“A farmer buying a tractor is a long way from encouraging youngsters to run from their church and families,” Rachel’s
dat
pointed out.

“I’ll not carry gossip against one of our own, but he did let his son spend too much time with that brother Joab of his.” She gave her husband a meaningful look. “Maybe that’s where the son got the idea to leave in the first place.”

“No need to bring up such old news, Esther. What a man does when he’s twenty shouldn’t come back to bite him when he’s fifty.”

Rachel’s curiosity made her want to ask what exactly Joab Rust had done when he was twenty, but she knew better. Her mother would say, given time, but she had to be patient. She concentrated on her bowl of limas.

“You might tell her to go have a chat with that Joab, Samuel,” Rachel’s mother said after several minutes of silence stretched between them. “Could be he knows a thing or two about running off to the English.”

“Joab? We’re talking about Joab Rust?” Rachel looked from her mother to her father.

“Maybe she doesn’t know,” Rachel’s
mam
went on. “It could be important. It’s not gossip. It’s all true. Could be people need to know.”

“What should I know?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t say a man should be judged on his past. Only that the past still exists. Just because a man—”

“All right, all right.” Patience exhausted, her father threw up his hands. “You’ll not rest until I tell her, although it’s not worth mentioning, in my opinion.” He tugged at his neatly trimmed beard, and he turned to Rachel. “What your mother is trying to say, which she can’t since she doesn’t speak to you, is that Joab ran off before he was baptized into the church. He went to Canada to harvest corn.”

“Wheat,” her
mam
corrected softly. “It was wheat. But if she wants to talk to somebody about how you run away from Stone Mill, Joab Rust would be her man.”

 

After Rachel left her parents’ house, she drove to Joab Rust’s place. She didn’t see how Joab leaving more than twenty years ago could have anything to do with the kids leaving today, but it wouldn’t do any harm to talk to him. Maybe her mother knew more than she was saying. It was often the Amish way and her mother’s way.

As she pulled into the farmyard, a border collie ran out to bark at the Jeep, but otherwise, it was quiet. A child’s push-scooter leaned against the back porch, and a cow poked her head out of the barn window. Chickens scratched in the yard, but none of the Rust family appeared. Rachel slipped into her canvas sneakers, walked across the tidy yard to the back door, and knocked. When no one answered after a minute or two, she returned to the Jeep. Apparently, no one was home.

She was just getting back into the Jeep when she heard the distinctive
thwack
of an axe splitting wood. She stopped and listened for a moment. The sound was coming from out back; the sound of an axe cutting could carry some distance. She got out of the Jeep, walked around the barn, and gazed out across the field, in the direction of the woods. The sound of the axe was definitely coming from that direction. A dirt lane ran along several outbuildings, across the field and into the woods. She thought about walking out there, but it was getting dark and she felt . . . uneasy. It was probably Joab in the woods, but what if it wasn’t?

“What would Evan say?” she said out loud.
Use common sense.
That’s what he would say. She got back into the red Jeep and followed the rutted road past the outbuildings, through an overgrown pasture to where the road ended at a gate at the woods line.

Rachel got out and scanned the thick woods. Here, the wood splitting was much louder, but the sound seemed to bounce off the trees, making the woodcutter more difficult to locate.